David Ben-Gurion | prime minister of Israel | Britannica.com prime minister of Israel Levi Eshkol David Ben-Gurion, original name David Gruen (born Oct. 16, 1886, Płońsk, Pol., Russian Empire [now in Poland]—died Dec. 1, 1973, Tel Aviv–Yafo , Israel ), Zionist statesman and political leader, the first prime minister (1948–53, 1955–63) and defense minister (1948–53; 1955–63) of Israel. It was Ben-Gurion who, on May 14, 1948, at Tel Aviv, delivered Israel’s declaration of independence. His charismatic personality won him the adoration of the masses, and, after his retirement from the government and, later, from the Knesset (the Israeli house of representatives), he was revered as the “Father of the Nation.” David Ben-Gurion with Golda Meir at the Knesset in Jerusalem, 1962.

Fritz Cohen/© The State Govenment of Israel Ben-Gurion, born David Gruen, was the son of Victor Gruen , one of the leaders in Płońsk of the “Lovers of Zion,” a movement that was disseminating among the oppressed Jews of eastern Europe the idea of the return to their original homeland of Israel. Zionism fascinated the young David Gruen, and he became convinced that the first step for the Jews who wanted to revive Israel as a nation was to immigrate to Palestine and settle there as farmers. In 1906 the 20-year-old Gruen arrived in Palestine and for several years worked as a farmer in the Jewish agricultural settlements in the coastal plain and in Galilee , the northern region of Palestine. There he adopted the ancient Hebrew name Ben-Gurion. Suffering the hardships of the early pioneers, including malaria and hunger, he never lost sight of his goal.

It was owing to his efforts that the 1907 convention of his Zionist socialist party, Poale Zion (“Workers of Zion”), included the following declaration in its platform: “The party aspires to the political independence of the Jewish people in this land.” With the outbreak of World War I , the Turkish governors of Palestine, their suspicions aroused by his Zionist activity, arrested Ben-Gurion and expelled him from the Ottoman Empire . During the height of the war, he traveled to New York , where he met and eventually married the Russian-born Pauline Munweis. In the last stages of World War I, the British supplanted Turkish rule in the Middle East; and with this change the Jewish settlers and their friends and supporters abroad began to realize that Zionism could rely for future assistance on Britain as well as on the wealthy and influential segments of American Jewry. Following the British government’s publication on Nov. 2, 1917, of the Balfour Declaration , which promised the Jews a “national home” in Palestine, Ben-Gurion enlisted in the British army’s Jewish Legion and sailed back to the Middle East to join the war for the liberation of Palestine from Ottoman rule.

Britannica Stories Scientists Ponder Menopause in Killer Whales The British had already defeated the Turks when the Jewish Legion reached the battlefield, and, when Britain received the mandate over Palestine, the work of realizing the “Jewish national home” had begun. For Ben-Gurion, the “national home” was a step toward political independence. To implement it, he called for accelerated Jewish immigration to Palestine in the effort to create a Jewish nucleus that would serve as the foundation for the establishment of a Jewish state . That nucleus was the Histadrut —the confederation of Jewish workers in Palestine founded in 1920 by Ben-Gurion (who was elected its first secretary-general) and his colleagues. The Histadrut rapidly became a central force in social, economic, and even security affairs, attaining the position of a “state within a state.” Ten years later, in 1930, a number of labour factions united and founded Mapai , the Israeli Workers Party, with Ben-Gurion at its head. In 1935 he was elected chairman of the Zionist Executive, the highest directing body of world Zionism, and head of the Jewish Agency , the movement’s executive branch.

Structures of Government: Fact or Fiction? As the Jewish settlement strengthened and deepened its roots in Palestine, anxiety mounted among the Palestinian Arabs, resulting in violent clashes between the two communities . In 1939 Britain changed its Middle East policy, abandoning its sympathetic stand toward the Jews and adopting a sympathetic attitude toward the Arabs, leading to severe restrictions on Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine. Ben-Gurion reacted by calling upon the Jewish community to rise against England, thus heralding the decade of “fighting Zionism.” On May 12, 1942, he assembled an emergency conference of American Zionists in New York City; the convention decided upon the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine after the war. At the end of World War II , Ben-Gurion again led the Jewish community in its successful struggle against the British mandate; and in May 1948, in accordance with a decision of the United Nations General Assembly , with the support of the United States and the Soviet Union , the State of Israel was established. Britannica Lists & Quizzes Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies David Ben-Gurion became prime minister and minister of defense.

Through internal political struggles that incensed both the right and the left, he succeeded in breaking up the underground armies that had fought the British and in fusing them into a national army, which became a model and symbol of the maturing Israeli nation and an effective force against the invading Arab armies from Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt . Although the fighting ended with an Israeli victory, the Arab leaders refused to enter into formal peace negotiations with the Jewish state. Ben-Gurion viewed the newborn state as the direct continuation of Jewish history that, in his opinion, had been interrupted 2,000 years earlier when the Roman legions had crushed the Hebrew freedom fighters and banished the Jews from Palestine. He saw the Jews’ period of exile as a prolonged interlude in the history of Israel and declared that they had now regained their rightful home. In order to strengthen and develop the young nation, Ben-Gurion presented the people of Israel with a series of challenges: the absorption of mass immigration from all over the world; the assimilation of newcomers of diverse communities and backgrounds; the creation of a unified public education system; the settlement of the desert lands. In his foreign policy , he adopted an independent and pragmatic course.

He used to say: “What matters is not what the Gentiles will say, but what the Jews will do.” His defense policy was firm, and he answered violations of the cease-fire agreements by neighbouring Arab states with military reprisals. His stronghanded policy inspired little sympathy for him from the governments of the United States and Britain. They preferred more moderate leaders such as Chaim Weizmann , first president of Israel, and Moshe Sharett , who was elected prime minister for a brief term (1953–55) when Ben-Gurion temporarily retired from office. Striving to gain a foothold in the Middle East, the U.S.S.R. alienated Israel by providing the Arabs with vast quantities of arms. At that time, Ben-Gurion found an ally in France. During the war in Algeria, France encountered the opposition of the united Arab front, led by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser , and consequently drew closer to Israel, supplying it with considerable amounts of military equipment; when Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in July 1956, French initiative brought Israel to join the Franco-British military campaign against Egypt. On Oct.

29, 1956, following a secret visit to France and a meeting with French and British leaders, Ben-Gurion ordered the army to take over the Sinai Peninsula , while France and Britain were making an abortive attempt to seize the canal. Israel subsequently withdrew from Sinai after having been assured freedom of navigation in the Strait of Tiran and de facto peace along the Egyptian-Israeli border, which was to be supervised by a special United Nations force. Connect with Britannica Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest Following the Sinai campaign, Israel entered a period of diplomatic and economic prosperity. Ben-Gurion was head of government until 1963. During his last years of office, he initiated several plans (which proved fruitless) for secret talks with Arab leaders with a view to establishing peace in the Middle East. In June 1963 Ben-Gurion unexpectedly resigned from the government for unnamed “personal reasons.” His move apparently resulted in part from the bitter internal controversy between his supporters and his rivals in the party, who rose against him for the first time because of the political implications of the 1954 “ Lavon Affair ,” involving Israeli-inspired sabotage of U.S. and British property in Egypt.

The affair led Ben-Gurion in 1965 to leave Mapai with a number of his supporters and to found a small opposition party, Rafi , at the head of which he fought, with little success, against his successor, Levi Eshkol . David Ben-Gurion (centre) walking with Shimon Peres (left), 1969. © The State of Israel Government Press Office In 1970 Ben-Gurion retired from the Knesset and from all political activity, devoting himself to the writing of his memoirs in Sde-Boqer, a kibbutz in the Negev . He published a number of books, mostly collections of speeches and essays. Through most of his life he had also engaged in researches into the history of the Jewish community in Palestine and in the study of the Bible.

Prime Ministers of Israel from 1948 until the Present Prime Ministers of Israel from 1948 until the Present David Ben Gurion (1886-1973) David Ben-Gurion - Prime Minister - Biography.com Prime Minister A Zionist statesman and political leader, David Ben-Gurion was the first prime minister and defense minister of Israel. IN THESE GROUPS Famous People Born in Plonsk, Russian Empire (now in Poland) Synopsis Born in Poland in 1886, David Ben-Gurion was Israel's first prime minister (1948-53, 1955-63) and defense minister (1948-53; 1955-63). It was Ben-Gurion who, on May 14, 1948, delivered Israel's declaration of independence. His charismatic personality won him the adoration of the masses, and, after his retirement from the government and the Knesset, he was revered as the "Father of the Nation." Ben-Gurion died in Israel in 1973.

Early Years Originally David Gruen, David Ben-Gurion was born in Plonsk, Russian Empire (now in Poland), on October 16, 1886. He was educated in a Hebrew school founded by his father, an enthusiastic Zionist. Ben-Gurion himself was leading a Zionist youth group by his early teens. When he was 18 years old, Ben-Gurion began teaching in a Jewish school in Warsaw, soon pairing socialism with his Zionism and joined Poalei Zion (Workers of Zion), a socialist/Zionist group. Ben-Gurion's abiding drive to ensure a Jewish homeland took him to the Middle East—specifically Palestine, the "land of Israel"—in 1906, where he helped create a commune for agricultural workers and Hashomer (Watchmen), the Jewish self-defense group. It was at this time that he adopted the ancient Hebrew name Ben-Gurion. Once World War I began, Ben-Gurion was deported by the Ottomans and left the Middle East for New York City, where he met and married Paula Monbesz, a fellow Zionist.

Toward a Jewish State On November 2, 1917, the British government set forth the Balfour Declaration, promising the Jews a "national home" in Palestine. Upon its release, Ben-Gurion went back to the Middle East and joined the war against the Ottomans for the liberation of Palestine. Once the Ottomans were overthrown, Ben-Gurion called for Jews to immigrate in greater droves to Palestine, thereby creating a foundation upon which to establish a Jewish state. By 1935, Ben-Gurion was chairman of the Zionist Executive—the highest level of oversight in the world Zionism. As the decade wore on and the Jewish movement in the region grew, Arabs became uneasy, and violent clashes resulted. Soon after, the British began siding with the Arabs over the Jews, and restricting Jewish migration to Palestine. Ben-Gurion's reaction was swift, and he urged Jews to stand up against England. World War II would become paramount soon, but during a May 1942 assembly, Ben-Gurion and the gathered body decided that the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine after the war was of utmost importance.

After the war, Ben-Gurion continued his rally against the British mandate, and in May 1948, the United Nations General Assembly, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to the creation of the state of Israel. The Israeli State In May 1948, Ben-Gurion became Israel's first prime minister and defense minister, and began overseeing the establishment of the state's institutions and infrastructure projects. He also presided over projects working toward the development and population of the new nation. Ben-Gurion established a strong Israeli defense, which would prove resilient to advances by neighboring Arab states that would give him and Israel little rest over his tenure. He briefly retired in 1953, but returned to positions of power in 1955 and led the Israeli government until 1963, when he suddenly retired, citing personal reasons. During his final years of office, Ben-Gurion initiated talks with regional Arab leaders toward establishing peace in the Middle East—though, as history would prove, to no avail. He died in Tel Aviv–Yafo, Israel, on December 1, 1973, at the age of 87. Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness.

If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us ! Citation Information Golda Meir becomes Israeli Prime Minister | History Today Golda Meir becomes Israeli Prime Minister Richard Cavendish remembers Israel's own Iron Lady, who became Prime Minister on March 17th 1969 Golda Meir Israel’s own imperious ‘iron lady’ and first woman prime minister once said: ‘It was not as though there was a Palestinian people considering itself Palestinian and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.’ Asked when she thought the Arab problem would be resolved, she said: ‘When the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.’ David Ben-Gurion used to call her the best man in his government. She started life as Goldie Mabovitch, born to a Jewish family in the Ukrainian city of Kiev in 1898. Her Russian childhood left her, she said, with ‘no happy or even pleasant memories’, but the family emigrated to the United States and from 1906 lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where her father had a job as a railroad carpenter, her mother ran a grocery, and she went to school.

A convinced Zionist from an early age, she married a sign-painter named Morris Myerson and in 1921 she and her husband left for Palestine where they lived in a kibbutz which Myerson hated. They had two children but the marriage broke up and Myerson died in 1951. By that time his tough-minded former wife had risen high in Israeli politics. As head from 1946 of the political department of the Jewish Agency, which represented the Jews to the British authorities, she worked for the many Jewish refugees who had fled Europe for Palestine in violation of British immigration rules and for the release of leading Zionists who had been arrested. She was 50 when she became one of the signatories of Israel’s Proclamation of Independence in Tel Aviv’s art museum in 1948 when she found herself close to tears and remembering her schooldays when she had scanned the names of the men who signed the American Declaration of Independence. Elected to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in 1949 she was briefly her country’s first ambassador to Moscow, holding Israel’s first-ever passport.

She was minister of labour from 1949-56 and foreign minister from 1956 until 1966. By then she had Hebraicised her married name to Golda Meir. She supported the prime minister, Levi Eshkol, in party conflicts and when he died in 1969 the party pressed her to succeed him on a temporary basis even though she was 70 and officially retired. She moved into the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem and began to get used to ‘the permanent presence of police and bodyguards, to a work day of at least 16 hours and to the minimum of privacy’. She lasted until 1974, when she resigned after being heavily criticised over the Yom Kippur War. When she died in Jerusalem in 1978, she was 80 and it was revealed that for the last 12 years she had been suffering from leukaemia. What Happened in 1948 including Pop Culture, Significant Events, Key Technology and Inventions How Much things cost in 1948 Yearly Inflation U.S.A.

7.74% Average Cost of new house $7,700.00 Average wages per year $2,950.00 Cost of a gallon of Gas 16 cents Average Cost of a new car $1,250.00 Loaf of Bread 14 cents LB of Hamburger Meat 45 cents Science and Mechanics Magazine 20 cents Movie Ticket 60 Cents Cauliflower 15 cents per head Chewing Gum 12 cents for 3 Coffee 85 cents for 2 pound bag Onions 49 cents 10 pounds Pork and Beans 25 cents for 2 cans Pork Roast 39 Cents per pound Example of houses for sale this year Warren, Pennsylvania 5 room bungalow on 1 acre with furnace electricity water gas and double garage $7,000 Lincoln, Nebraska -- New Homes 2 bedrooms forced air ideal location $7,000 Below are some Prices for UK guides in Pounds Sterling Average House Price 1,751 Indian pacifist and leader Mahatma Gandhi is murdered on 26th January by a Hindu extremist.

More Information for the Gandhi's Assassination Indian independence activist Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated at the age of 78 during January of 1948. The assassination took place outside of the Birla House in New Delhi where Gandhi was set to attend a prayer meeting. The assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a Hindu nationalist who had disagreed with Gandhi's acceptance of Muslims and his non-violent position in the wake of religious tensions created by the division of Pakistan and India. Godse was put on trial and sentenced to death despite objections from Gandhi's family and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, stating that an execution would dishonor the memory of Gandhi who had opposed the death penalty. Israel is declared as an independent state Israel is declared as an independent state. More Information for the creation of Israel. During May of 1948 the independent Jewish state of Israel was created in Palestine by the United Nations. The creation of Israel marked the first time in 2,000 years that an independent Jewish state had existed. David Ben-Gurion became the newly formed country's first Prime Minister.

Immediately after the creation of Israel the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 began when forces from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan invaded the country. The surrounding Arab nations had disagreed with the formation of Israel from the start as they believed the land had been distributed unfairly and it had displaced Arab Palestinians. Fighting continued until 1949 when Israel was able to form several armistice agreements with the neighboring Arab states. Polaroid Land Camera The First Polaroid Camera is goes on sale at the Boston Jordan Marsh department store for $89.75 More Information and Timeline for Polaroid Land Camera 1. 1932 Edwin H. Land establishes Land-Wheelwright Laboratories in Boston with his former Harvard physics professor, George Wheelwright III. They continue to research and to produce synthetic polarizers. 2. 1939 Polaroid produces glasses, ski goggles, 3D glasses, and dark-adapter goggles for the Army and Navy. 3. 1948 November 26 The first Land camera, the Model 95, is sold in Boston at Jordan Marsh department store for $89.75.

This model is the prototype for all Polaroid Land cameras produced for the next 15 years. 4. The Polaroid Camera cost nearly 15 times more than the popular Kodak Brownie sold at the time ( $5.50 ) plus the film cost substantially more 5. 1949 The Polaroid Land Model 95 camera Photographic sales exceed $5 million in the first year Western European Treaty is signed. More Information for the Treaty of Brussels/Western European Treaty. The Treaty of Brussels, also known as the Western European Treaty, was signed by five European Nations during March of 1948. The signatories included Belgium, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, France, and the Netherlands. The treaty established military, social, and cultural cooperation between the five nations in an attempt to bolster defense and solidify their alliance for Western Europe against the growing threat of Communism in Eastern Europe. The treaty was important in the development of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Western European Union. National Health Service NHS Created British National Health Service Act creates the NHS in July. More Information for the NHS. The United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS) was launched during July of 1948.

Created by the National Health Service Act of 1946 , the NHS was envisioned as an ambitious social program that would bring free healthcare to the citizens of the United Kingdom. Funded entirely by taxation, the NHS provided fair and decent healthcare to all that would be free at the point of service. The original law only created the NHS in England and Wales, with Scotland and Northern Ireland having to create their own separate services. Sylvia Beckingham, a thirteen year old with a liver condition, became the first patient to be treated under the new NHS in 1948. Czechoslovakia becomes Communist after coup. More Information for Czechoslovakia becomes Communist During February of 1948 Communist rule was established in Czechoslovakia after a nearly bloodless coup took place. President Eduard Benes announced that the nation would transition to a Communist system after being pressured by the newly influential Czechoslovakian Communist Party. Western powers viewed the coup as an expansion of power by the Soviet Union and feared the ease at which the Soviet Union was able to gain influence in parts of Eastern and Southern Europe. Despite the country's previously democratic traditions, Czechoslovakia remained Communist until the Velvet Revolution in 1989 .

Mary Leakey discovers the fossilized skull of Proconsul Africanus at Rusinga Island. More Information for Mary Leakey. Archaeologist Mary Douglas Leakey made her very first important fossil discovery in October of 1948. While digging on Rusinga Island in Kenya with her husband Louis Leakey, Mary discovered the jaws and skull of a possible human ancestor, Proconsul Africanus. The fossil was determined to be between 18 and 25 million years old and was more closely related to modern monkeys and apes than to modern humans. World -- U.N. Declaration of Human Rights The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10th of 1948 in Paris. The document, while not legally binding, laid the foundation of basic human rights upon which subsequent treaties and declarations were based. The UDHR is thirty articles long and was conceived as a reaction to the atrocities committed during World War II and the Holocaust. The document enumerated that all humans should be entitled to fair treatment, dignity, and equal freedoms regardless of their personal characteristics or affiliations.

Calendar For The Year 1948 Australia -- Prime Minister -- Ben Chifley -- Brazil -- President -- Gaspar Dutra -- Canada -- Prime Minister -- William Lyon Mackenzie King -- till November 15 Canada -- Prime Minister -- Louis St. Laurent -- from November 15, France -- Prime Minister -- Vincent Auriol -- From 16 January India -- Prime Minister -- Jawahar Lal Nehru -- From 15 August Italy -- Prime Minister -- Alcide De Gasperi -- Japan -- Prime Minister -- Tetsu Katayama -- Till 10 March Japan -- Prime Minister -- Hitoshi Ashida -- From 10 March Japan -- Prime Minister -- Hitoshi Ashida -- Till 15 October Japan -- Prime Minister -- Shigeru Yoshida -- From 15 October Mexico -- President -- Miguel Alem�n Vald�s -- Russia / Soviet Union -- General Secretary of the Central Committee -- Joseph Stalin -- South Africa -- Prime Minister -- Field Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts -- Till 4 June South Africa -- Prime Minister -- Daniel Fran�ois Malan -- From 4 June United States -- President -- Harry S.

Truman -- United Kingdom -- Prime Minister -- Clement Attlee -- Menachem Begin, Guerrilla Leader Who Became Peacemaker Menachem Begin, Guerrilla Leader Who Became Peacemaker By JAMES FERON Menachem Begin, the Israeli Prime Minister who made peace with Egypt, lived much of his life in the opposition. A Jewish underground leader before Israel gained independence in 1948, he openly fought the established Zionist leadership of the struggle against British rule. Then for nearly three decades, he headed Israel's major opposition party. Ultimately and to many Israelis, surprisingly, his minority bloc ousted the Labor Party, which had governed continuously in the three decades since statehood, and Mr. Begin, as party leader, became Prime Minister. He was to govern an ever more divided and troubled nation. Mr. Begin, who led Israel from May 1977 until he resigned as Prime Minister in 1983, stretched the national mood from great pride to deep dismay. He guided the nation to a peace treaty with Egypt, the first such pact with an Arab country. But he also presided over a bitterly divisive war against Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon. If the treaty with Egypt, which brought Mr.

Begin a shared 1978 Nobel Peace Prize with President Anwar el-Sadat, represented a high point in his political leadership, the war in Lebanon in 1982 and the stalemate that followed, with its steady toll of dead and wounded, were its low point. Started with the announced aim of evicting Palestinian guerrillas from operating too close to Israel's border with Lebanon, it brought Israeli troops to the outskirts of Beirut. It enmeshed Israel in the lethal sectarian politics of Lebanon, and led to a costly and indecisive occupation. The invasion in June 1982 was seen by Israelis at first as a justified response to years of border harassment. But when the Israelis advanced to the outskirts of Beirut and bombed and shelled the Lebanese capital for 10 weeks, criticism and anguish arose. Massacres at Camps Deeply Affect Israelis Dissent reached a peak in the fall of 1982, when Lebanese Christian militia units entered Palestinian refugee districts at Sabra and Shatila that were supposedly under Israeli guard and killed hundreds of people. The massacre led to an independent investigation ordered by the Israeli Government, which concluded that Israeli troops watched the killing from a distance and did nothing to stop it.

Mr. Begin survived in office, but was shaken politically. His medical problems -- he had suffered three heart attacks -- became an increasing burden. And in November 1982, his wife of 43 years, Aliza, died while he was on a trip to the United States. Thereafter, Mr. Begin became increasingly listless, participating little in debate in Parliament, taking less and less interest in politics and limiting his public appearances. On Aug. 28, 1983, he announced that he planned to quit and on Sept. 15 he formally resigned as Prime Minister. Mr. Begin became something of a recluse. He lived with his daughter Leah in an apartment near the Jerusalem residence of his son, Benjamin, now a member of the Israeli Parliament and a leader in the Likud Party. He was rarely seen in public and left his house only for rare visits to a hospital and memorial services for his wife. Yehiel Kadishai, a close friend and longtime adviser, visited daily and enabled Mr. Begin to keep up with correspondence. Mr. Begin also received visits from a small circle of friends. When he became Prime Minister, Mr. Begin represented both political and stylistic change.

He brought a new demeanor to the Prime Minister's office with his remote manner, a sharp contrast to the earthy and informal style of his Labor Party predecessors. Unlike the bulk of Israeli politicians, he was seldom seen other than in suit and tie. Land and Ideology; Legacy and Withdrawal And he moved the country in a distinctly different ideological direction. Hours after his election victory, he visited an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, which had been captured in the 1967 war, declaring it part of "liberated Israel." Labor Governments had avoided such declarations, but to Mr. Begin the West Bank was Judea and Samaria, Jewish land from biblical times. His Government did not formally annex the West Bank, as it did the Golan Heights, a Syrian promontory captured in 1967 after its long use as a base for shelling northern Israel. But under Mr. Begin, the West Bank began to be heavily settled by Israelis. He was also to return some Arab land taken in battle, a strip of Syrian territory won in 1973 and a town on the Golan Heights taken in 1967. But the most significant territorial withdrawal, and for Mr.

Begin the most personally wrenching, was in the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel returned to Egypt in three stages from 1979 through 1982. Jewish settlements in Sinai were abandoned despite intense protest by their residents. The Sinai withdrawal was the last stage of a process that began with Mr. Sadat's landmark visit to Jerusalem in November 1977, six months after Mr. Begin took office. The Egyptian President, frustrated by the intransigence of Arab neighbors in the dealing with Israel, had hinted that he was prepared to go it alone in seeking peace and had said he would even travel to even Jerusalem, in pursuit of that goal. Mr. Begin responded with an invitation. On a warm November evening, the wheels of the presidential aircraft, Egypt 01, touched down at Ben-Gurion International Airport. Mr. Begin stepped forward and said: "I am waiting for you, Mr. President, and all the ministers are waiting for you." Sixteen months of arduous negotiations followed, including the marathon talks at Camp David, Md., with the intercession of President Jimmy Carter.

The process culminated in the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty signed in Washington on March 26, 1979. But Mr. Begin's wariness toward the Arabs, on behalf of what he considered Israel's vital security interests, remained undiminished. In June 1981, he ordered the bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor near Baghdad. This was followed in July by two weeks of bombing in Lebanon. In December, he pushed through Parliament a measure to annex the Golan Heights. This drew sharp criticism from Washington and other capitals, but Mr. Begin held his ground. His relations with the United States included many other difficult moments. When the Reagan Administration suspended a strategic cooperation pact with Israel and imposed financial sanctions because of the Golan annexation, Mr. Begin said Israel was being treated like a "vassal state." His relations with Egypt also changed. After Mr. Sadat was shot to death by Muslim extremists in October 1981, his successor, President Hosni Mubarak, seemed determined to calm the hostility toward Egypt in the rest of the Arab world because of its peace treaty with Israel. Relations between Egypt and Israel cooled, especially after the invasion of Lebanon the following year.

The 1977 visit to Jerusalem by Mr. Sadat and the subsequent treaty gave Mr. Begin one of the great satisfactions of his career. He explained his feelings in a forceful and eloquent speech in Parliament that also addressed deeper concerns. "Why is this peace treaty so important?" he asked. "This is the first peace treaty Israel ever signed, the first peace treaty after five wars in which we have lost 12,000 of our people. Our aim, our yearning and our dream is to smash this helix of hatred. We must sign this treaty because it is a human act of the highest degree." At the White House signing, Mr. Begin said it was "the third greatest day of my life" -- after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and the unification of Jerusalem in the 1967 war.

The Israeli leader was seeking to place the signing into the historical context of his life, a life that until 1977 had been spent almost entirely in opposition -- to the mainstream of Jews in his native Poland, to both the German and Russian invaders of his homeland in World War II, to the established leaders of the Jewish military struggle against British rule in Palestine and to the decades of Labor Party government in Israel. A Zionism Forged By Bible and Holocaust He believed fiercely, and contentiously, that the Jews had a right to a national homeland and that it should range over the land of their biblical forebears. This was Zion and he was a dedicated Zionist, if a follower of the Zionist Revisionist organization founded by Vladimir Jabotinsky. Mr. Begin was marked forever by the Holocaust, which had wiped out all vestiges of his former life in Poland. The pursuit of those goals was a thread that ran through his life. He was to he spend much time explaining and trying to justify what some considered extreme actions and statements.

The best-known of those occurred in 1946, when Irgun Zvai Leumi, the underground terrorist faction he headed during the final years of the British mandate in Palestine, blew up a wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of the British administrators of Palestine. The attack killed 90 people, among them Jewish and Arab employees as well as British officials. The most infamous incident was the Irgun's attack on an Arab village, Deir Yassin, in April 1948, in which more than 200 men, women and children were killed. Two months after that assault, the freighter Altalena, loaded with arms and ammunition and 900 men recruited by the Irgun, came under fire from regular Jewish forces loyal to David Ben-Gurion, by then Prime Minister, who feared that the new Government of Israel might be overthrown or that civil war might break out after the fight against the Arabs was over. Another, and sometimes rival underground faction, the Stern Gang, was headed by Yitzhak Shamir, who would in time become Mr. Begin's Foreign Minister, and Prime Minister on his resignation. Mr. Begin struggled fiercely against Mr.

Ben-Gurion, the mainstream Zionist leader and head of the regular Jewish force in the fight for nationhood. After independence in 1948, Mr. Ben-Gurion became Israel's first Prime Minister, and their conflict exploded frequently. From Coalition To Opposition From 1967 to 1970, Mr. Begin served in a war coalition, then withdrew when Israel began to consider an American proposal that would have linked withdrawal from the occupied territories with peace. In August 1970 he returned to the political opposition. Mr. Begin, a brilliant speaker and writer, was also an enigma: often soft-spoken, mild- mannered and personable. Yet this slight but firmly built man, who dressed in gray and never lost the hand-kissing tradition of his early years in Poland, was described as having the flinty looks of a movie terrorist. There was no doubt about his dramatic flair. Once during a speech in the immigrant quarter of Jerusalem, he began to describe the "guarantees" for Israel that were being offered by American diplomats seeking to encourage Arab negotiations. His voice rose and his manner grew intense.

He pointed higher and higher, as if searching for something, until he had everyone looking skyward. "Guarantees, guarantees -- maybe there you will find guarantees," he said, adding, as he pointed to the ground, "Not here!" Early in 1977, with the Labor Government riddled by dissension and tainted, in the view of some, by corruption, Mr. Begin finally achieved the political recognition that had so long eluded him. Though weary from a heart attack two months before the election, he emerged with an upset victory and was asked to form a government. Several things brought about his victory: The Labor Party had become increasingly identified with worsening inflation, frequent strikes and a stagnant economy. Its scandals led to the creation of the Democratic Movement for Change, which drew a valuable 15 seats of 120 from Labor in the election, and briefly joined the new Likud coalition. In addition, a "second Israel" of Jews from North Africa and the Middle East, the poor of the cities and new towns, had grown to become the nation's majority, and these people were attracted to Mr. Begin.

Despite his European origin, they felt that he, too, had been outside the establishment, and he promised greater militancy toward the Arabs. Mr. Begin retained power in 1981 after his right-wing Likud bloc emerged with a one-seat lead over the Labor alignment of Shimon Peres. His margin of success came from the religious parties, which enabled him to form a fragile governing coalition. The Old Country Proved a Cruel Home Menachem Wolfovitch Begin was born on Aug. 16, 1913, in Brest, when it was still part of the czarist Russian Empire. The area was returned to Poland in 1921, occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939 soon after Hitler's attack on Poland, overrun by the Nazis after Hitler turned on Stalin and attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, and ceded to Moscow in 1945. Zionism was central to Mr. Begin's childhood. His father, Dov Zeev Begin, had been educated in Berlin and traveled widely for his father, a timber merchant.

Dov Begin's travels brought him into contact with Jewish nationalists, the Zionist "heretics," as they were called by the traditionally minded. Menachem, the youngest of three children, developed an early interest in oratory and made his first speech at the age of 10, in a mixture of Hebrew and Yiddish. At 15 he joined Betar, the Zionist Revisionists' youth movement, and was trained in the use of weapons. Ten years later, with a law degree from Warsaw University, he headed Betar, which by then had 70,000 members in 600 Polish communities. "My friends and I labored to educate a generation to be prepared not only to toil for the rebuilding of a Jewish state but also to fight for it, suffer for it and, if needs be, die for it," he said, paraphrasing Jabotinsky. Mr. Begin fled from Warsaw ahead of the advancing Germans in 1939 and was in Polish-controlled Vilna in 1940 when the Russians occupied the city, now Vilnius, Lithuania. He obtained a visa to go to Palestine but gave it to a friend he thought would have more trouble.

The Russians soon arrested him, accusing him of being a Zionist and a British agent, and sent him to Siberia. His wife, whom he had married a year earlier, went on to Palestine, convinced that she could do nothing to help her husband. Later, she became quietly influential in his political life while remaining out of the limelight. Besides their son, Benjamin, they had two other children -- Hasia and Leah -- and eight grandchildren. In later years Mr. Begin recalled the interrogations of his Siberian incarceration. They turned on the Russian Revolution, on Britain and Zionism, on Herzl and Jabotinsky. "From my early youth," Mr. Begin said later, "I had been taught by my father, who went to his death at Nazi hands voicing his faith in God and singing 'Hatikvah,' that we Jews were to return to the land of Israel -- not go, travel or come, but return." It was a tenet that was to sustain him throughout his life.

Nearly four decades later, visiting a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, he would chide reporters for calling the area occupied ("These are liberated territories"), for asking if they would be annexed ("You annex foreign land, not your own country"), and for references to the West Bank ("Say Judea and Samaria," the territories' biblical names). Though sentenced to eight years in a labor camp, he was released by the Soviet Union in 1941 in an agreement with the Polish government-in-exile that freed 1.5 million Poles. Mr. Begin found his sister, the family's only other survivor, then joined the Free Polish Army. That took him to Iran and to Palestine. Having learned English by listening to the BBC, he served in the British Army in Palestine as a conscripted interpreter until the end of 1943. Then he took over the leadership of the Irgun underground in the battle for a Zionist homeland.

Wanted by British With a $50,000 Bounty By 1946 the British authorities were conducting an intensive hunt for the man they described as the "grim-faced, bespectacled Menachem Begin," placing a price of $8,000 on his head. Later, it was raised to $50,000. The Irgun, often working with weapons and explosives purchased from the Arabs, set about breaking the grip of colonial rule. Mr. Begin, in his book "The Revolt," explained the group's actions this way: "The arrest of British officers in order to secure the annulment of a death 'sentence,' the arrest of more officers which did not prevent the murder of our captive comrades, the whipping of officers in retaliation for the whipping of our young soldiers, hangings in retaliation for hangings." In the first elections for Parliament, in January 1949, Mapai, the Labor Party, emerged with 44 seats; the left-wing Mapam won 15, the religious bloc, 16, and Mr. Begin's Herut Party, 14. Leading the opposition, Mr. Begin called for retaliatory raids against Arab irregulars.

He fought bitterly against ties with West Germany and was suspended from Parliament for organizing demonstrations. He was forever demanding apologies in Parliament and being asked to apologize in turn, sometimes for personal remarks and sometimes for policy statements. He would demand preventive war, for example, only to hear an opponent say that "anyone who does so is a criminal against the Jewish nation." A policy dispute would become personal. By the time of the 1956 war with Egypt, Mr. Begin's party was the second strongest. With the Israeli move into Sinai, the party lost much of the stigma of extremism, for the war was viewed by many Israelis as the expression of a policy long advocated by Herut. In 1973, Mr. Begin broke an embargo on domestic criticism of the Government's action in failing to accurately gauge Arab intentions leading to the war. The Arab attack on Yom Kippur, he said, only underscored the need to retain occupied territories. He resisted every pullback agreement, and in 1975 derided Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger for "telling us to trade territory for legitimacy." "We don't need legitimacy," Mr. Begin said. "We exist. Therefore we are legitimate." Although Mr.

Begin did in time exchange territory, giving up the Sinai and withdrawing Jewish settlements in return for peace with Egypt, he began as Prime Minister with familiar militancy. He visited a West Bank settlement, Elon Moreh, the day after the 1977 election and declared: "We stand on the land of liberated Israel. There will be many Elon Morehs. There will be many, many settlements in the coming weeks." In supporting the establishment of West Bank settlements, Mr. Begin made a distinction between those in territory within biblical Israel and those outside, like in Sinai. As Prime Minister, Mr. Begin became somewhat less outspoken and dramatic, learning to accept the necessary compromises of governing. He drew former opponents into the Cabinet: Moshe Dayan, Defense Minister in Labor Cabinets, became his Foreign Minister, only to resign in October 1979 over relations with the Arabs. Bitter and Painful Years: Lebanon, Wife's Death In the 1950's, Mr. Begin had called "every German a Nazi, every German a murderer," but as Prime Minister he congratulated the West Germans for freeing a hijacked Lufthansa airliner in Mogadishu, Somalia, and he met with the West German Ambassador.

Politically, he survived a challenge from the Labor Party a year after he took office. He suffered from diabetes as well as a heart ailment, and there were rumors as early as mid-1979, vigorously denied, that he was working on a reduced schedule. There were calls in Parliament for his resignation, but none was successful and he survived many votes of confidence. While Israel under Mr. Begin returned the Sinai to Egypt, it seemed to strengthen its hold on the other occupied territories -- principally, the West Bank and the Golan Heights -- through the establishment of the settlements. The first settlements, similar to those under Labor Governments, were isolated defense posts, with armed farmers tilling fields. Later settlements were built nearer Arab towns, and then within them, such as in Hebron. By 1982, about 30,000 Israelis lived on more than 100 such settlements. New highways encouraged commuting from prefabricated towns to jobs in Tel Aviv. Israel, under Mr. Begin, changed the unit of currency from the pound, a vestige of British rule, to the shekel, a coin used by the ancient Hebrews.

And Parliament, under his leadership, formally declared all of Jerusalem, a city divided into Jewish and Arab sectors before the 1967 war, to be the nation's undivided and eternal capital -- an act that was not recognized by most other countries. Mr. Begin's party was narrowly returned to power in 1981 in an election campaign marked by violence, the first such for Israel. The confrontations often pitted Sephardim, the Jews from the Arab lands who identified with Mr. Begin, against the formerly governing Ashkenazim, those from Europe. These clashes, especially disruptive during the Lebanon war, bespoke a rift in Israel that was to deepen, and would come to fundamentally demark Israeli politics and society. Lebanon was Mr. Begin's last war, perhaps the most bitter one for him, and the election his last as well. David Ben-Gurion | Jewish Virtual Library Tweet David Ben-Gurion was the first Prime Minister of Israel and widely hailed as the State's main founder. David Ben-Gurion was born in Plonsk, Poland in 1886 and educated in a Hebrew school established by his father, an ardent Zionist .

By his mid-teens, Ben-Gurion led a Zionist youth group, "Ezra," whose members spoke only Hebrew among themselves. At the age of 18 he became a teacher in a Warsaw Jewish school and joined the Socialist-Zionist group "Poalei Zion" (Workers of Zion). Arriving in the Land of Israel in 1906, he became involved in the creation of the first agricultural workers' commune (which evolved into the Kvutzah and finally the Kibbutz ), and helped establish the Jewish self-defense group,  Hashomer  (The Watchman). Following the outbreak of World War I he was deported by the Ottoman authorities with Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (later, Israel's second President). Ben-Gurion traveled on behalf of the Socialist-Zionist cause to New York, where he met and married Paula Monbesz, a fellow Poalei Zion activist. He returned to Israel in the uniform of the Jewish Legion , created as a unit in the British Army by Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky .

Ben-Gurion was a founder of the trade unions, and, in particular, the national federation, the Histadrut , which he dominated from the early 1920's. He also served as the Histadrut's representative in the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency, and was elected chairman of both organizations in 1935. Having led the struggle to establish the State of Israel in May 1948, Ben-Gurion became Prime Minister and Defense Minister . As Premier, he oversaw the establishment of the state's institutions. He presided over various national projects aimed at the rapid development of the country and its population:  Operation Magic Carpet , the airlift of Jews from Arab countries, the construction of the national water carrier, rural development projects and the establishment of new towns and cities. In particular, he called for pioneering settlement in outlying areas, especially in the Negev . In late 1953, Ben-Gurion left the government and retired to Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev. He returned to political life, after the Knesset elections in 1955, assuming the post of Defense Minister and later the premiership.

Continuing as Prime Minister, Ben-Gurion supported the establishment of relations with West Germany , despite bitter opposition. He also led the country during the 1956 Sinai campaign , in which Israeli forces temporarily secured the Sinai peninsula. In June 1963 Ben-Gurion resigned as Prime Minister, citing personal reasons. Levi Eshkol took over the posts of Prime Minister and Defense Minister. But Ben-Gurion remained active politically, with a rivalry developing between him and Eshkol. In June 1965, the Mapai Party split, with Ben-Gurion establishing Rafi (List of Israeli Workers), which won ten Knesset seats in the following election. In 1968, Rafi rejoined Mapai and Ahdut Ha'avoda , to form the Israel Labor Party , while Ben-Gurion formed a new party, Hareshima Hamamlachtit (The State List), which won four Knesset seats in the 1969 elections. In June 1970, Ben-Gurion retired from political life and returned to Sde Boker where he passed away in 1973.

Question: Who became the first prime minister of Israel in 1948?
Answer: DAVID BEN-GURION